Some Data about ICME-9

Bernard R. Hodgson

The 9th International Congress on Mathematical Education now belongs to history. Participants to this extraordinary gathering will all agree that our hosts are to be unreservedly commended for the exceptional efficiency of their organization and for their warm and friendly hospitality. In many respects the quality of the organizational infrastructure and the logistic support have been brought by our Japanese colleagues to unchallenged levels of excellence.

I have received from the Secretariat of ICME-9 the following information concerning registrations. The congress was attended by a total of 2012 regular participants (including 1054 from overseas and 958 from Japan) and 239 accompanying persons (192 from overseas and 47 from Japan). There were 70 countries represented at ICME-9, the most numerous delegations coming from Japan (958), USA (223), China (121, including 84 from Mainland China, 20 from Hong Kong and 17 from Taiwan), UK (86), Australia (64), Korea (39), Sweden (37), Germany (36), Denmark (32), Israel (31), Netherlands (28), Spain (25), France (25, including 1 from New Caledonia), and Brazil (22).

Our Japanese hosts should be thanked for the remarkable support provided to some of the congress participants. It has been stated in the Second Announcement of ICME-9 that a program of grants would be offered to participants from non-affluent countries. It was then indicated that the Grant Fund would be made of two components: first, 7% of the income from regular registration fees would be devoted to the fund; and second, a sum equivalent to approximately 3% of the total of the registrations fees would come from domestic donations. It has turned out that the donations received by the National Organizing Committee was substantially more, so that this second part amounted to approximately 8% of the registration fees. These funds came essentially from individual private donations, a majority of these from persons not participating in ICME-9 but wishing to support mathematics education through ICME-9. Many of these donations were of the order of 1000 ¥, which indicates that the number of Japanese donators was quite high. The organizers of ICME-9 were able to support 96 participants coming from 37 different countries through the Grant Fund.

Finally, I would like to mention the exceptional support provided by the Japan Society of Mathematical Education towards the success of ICME-9, especially in ensuring a sound financial outcome of the congress.